The housing market collapse is taking more bank victims. You can protect your money and avoid needless hassle by knowing the safety rating of your bank.
The Latest Victims
Washington Mutual may be in a death spiral, losing $3.3 billion in the second quarter…admitting to losses of as much as $19 billion this year…and probably on its way to losses of an estimated $26 billion.
That estimated loss is over four times its total market value as of Friday’s close…12 times its yearly earnings in the best of times.  Why?
Washington Mutual has $214.6 …

News headlines of late are filled with bad news about mega losses for banks, investment firms and the GSEs…

Earlier this month we saw IndyMac Bank taken over by regulators. With assets of $32 billion as of March 31, it was the second-largest institution to go down in U.S. history. Resolving the failure won't be cheap, either. The FDIC estimates the cost at anywhere from $4 billion to $8 billion.

Megabank Wachovia was practically swimming in red ink, recording a loss of $8.9 billion, or $4.20 per share, in the second quarter. …

Housing values could plunge another 43-percent through 2010 and what to do about it!
Dr. Robert Schiller, the same bestselling author and Stanford economist who called the tech stock bust back in  2001, recently analyzed 116 years of U.S. housing-data and “ain’t a pretty picture.”
Take a look at this chart showing what he discovered…

It's easy to think your house is worth more, just comparing the dollars you paid for it with the dollars other houses around you sell for today. But what happens when you account for how weak today's …